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When is the best time to see Venus and Jupiter? Look for these planets on November 24 about 45 minutes after sunset, when twilight has set in and the sky is dark enough for Venus and Jupiter to dominate. Sunset is at 4:33 p.m. in New York, and it’s at 4:45 p.m. in Los Angeles, but you should check the exact time of sunset for your location. Where can you see Venus and Jupiter? Look to the southwest to see this special celestial show. You’ll find the planets about 7° above the horizon, so it might be wise to get...

Missing Venus? The third brightest natural object in the heavens returns to prime time dusk skies in 2015 after being absent and lingering in the dawn for most of 2014. But there’s another reason to hunt down the Cytherean world this week, as elusive Mercury chases after it low in the dusk. If you’ve never seen Mercury for yourself, now is a great time to try, using brilliant Venus as a guide.

Just when you think gender insanity couldn’t reach a higher fever pitch. Transgender activists have successfully lobbied sanitary pad brand Always to remove the Venus symbol, which has for millennia been representative of the female sex, from the packaging of their products to “be inclusive of transgender and nonbinary customers.” CNN reports: "Transgender activists and allies had publicly urged Procter & Gamble to redesign its pad wrapper without the gender symbol, a circle atop a cross. Among their arguments were that not all people who menstruate are women and that not all women menstruate. "The change is the latest in...

The probe will reportedly be able to survive for up to 60 days on Venus' harsh surface, where all others have made it for only a few hours. The Long-Lived In-situ Solar System Explorer, reported earlier Wednesday by Wired, is scheduled to be built and tested by 2023 and ready to face the treacherous conditions on Venus' surface for up to 60 days, including extremely high temperatures, tornadolike winds and high atmospheric pressure. Each part of the LLISSE will be designed to survive in these conditions on Venus' surface, where previous spacecraft starting in 1966 have made it only a...

The daughter of two college athletes was hand-picked by Serena Williams' coach to train in Nice, France in 2015, when she was just 11. The 15-year-old took a science test at 11 PM the night before she played one of the three qualifying matches at Roehampton to make the main tournament at Wimbledon. Gauff told CNN she ended up getting a 'B' on the test, and that only one of her teachers even knew she played tennis, but are now all cheering her on. She was homeschooled by her mother, a former teacher. Gauff's mother, Candi, ran track at Florida...

Earth's nearest neighbours have turned into uninhabitable hellholes. Understanding their transformation will teach us which rocky exoplanets might be fit for life CLOSE to the sun lie a pair of sizzling coals. You could be forgiven for thinking these strange worlds were two circles of hell: Mercury, a black and blasted plain, and Venus, a sweltering world beset by rain of pure acid. But for all the terror of their outward appearance, their insides are remarkably familiar. Along with Earth and Mars, they form the solar system’s only rocky planets, a stark contrast to the bloated gas giants that make...

One of the big questions in solar physics is why the Sun's activity follows a regular cycle of 11 years. Researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), an independent German research institute, now present new findings, indicating that the tidal forces of Venus, Earth and Jupiter influence the solar magnetic field, thus governing the solar cycle.

Cosmos 482 was a sister probe to Venera 8,which in July 1972 became the second craft to land successfully on the surface of Venus, said Don Mitchell, who studies Soviet space history and has a keen interest in that country's Venus exploration missions. But Cosmos 482 got stranded in an Earth parking orbit, Mitchell told Space.com. Some hardware from that failed flight — a heavy frame of tanks and equipment that was jettisoned — fell into Earth's atmosphere in rather short order. But some remained aloft. Still adrift around Earth, making one lap every 112 minutes, is the wayward Cosmos...

Monday morning (Feb.18), you'll be able to watch two planets that will pass in the dawn. One planet is very slowly descending into the dawn twilight and into eventual obscurity, while the other will become increasingly prominent in the weeks and months to come. The planets in question are Venus and Saturn. Look for them around 5:45 a.m. local time, low above the southeast horizon. Brilliant Venus, shining with a steady silvery-white glow, will be passing about 1.1 degree above and to the left of the much dimmer and yellower Saturn. If you have a telescope you might want to...

Within the unimaginable depths of the universe there is a small family of worlds circling about a star we call the Sun; it is just a single star among the billions upon billions which are shining in the cosmos. Against the awesome backdrop of the infinite blackness of space, our world is just another planet; nothing more than an insignificant speck on the cosmological scale of things, but it is our home, and as of yet we have found no other planets which are remotely like Earth. The history of our world is a story which is still largely incomplete....

A Russian astronomer observed the planets thru a telescope made of ice. Henry describes his observations. Ever wondered what the opinion of equality of the sexes was in 1789? Henry's position is that "Love, and all its delectable concomitants was utterly unknown there [on Venus]; as that passion exists but where equality is found or understood." Interesting?

“A prior indigenous technological species might have arisen on ancient Earth or another body, such as a pre-greenhouse Venus or a wet Mars,” he wrote. ... Earth’s plate tectonics would effectively have “erased” the traces of a civilization that lived billions of years ago. Venus is in the grip of a severe greenhouse effect and also undergoes similar “resurfacing” that would scour it clean of artifacts. This leaves just a handful of places where archaeologists might find traces of a lost extraterrestrial civilization. “Remaining indigenous technosignatures might be expected to be extremely old, limiting the places they might still be...

Discovered by the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN) spacecraft, the unusual phenomenon is thought to have been caused by the effects of the solar winds and could help to shine more light on how the Martian atmosphere escaped in to space. "We found that Mars' magnetic tail, or magnetotail, is unique in the Solar System," said NASA scientist Gina DiBraccio. "It's not like the magnetotail found at Venus, a planet with no magnetic field of its own, nor is it like Earth's, which is surrounded by its own internally generated magnetic field." "Instead, it is a hybrid between...

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk is a big "Hitchhiker's Guide" fan, as Starman's Roadster shows. The car's entertainment display was programmed to read "Don't Panic!" — the phrase that adorns the cover of the eponymous electronic guidebook in Adams' beloved series. Musk has said that he launched the Roadster and Starman because the duo is a lot more fun than the typical inert-mass dummy payload... Launching a satellite or other valuable spacecraft wasn't an option, given the risks inherent in maiden flights. The Roadster and Starman will come within a few hundred thousand kilometers of our planet in 2091,...

NASA is considering a spectacular airship concept for Venus exploration. The space agency’s Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate (SACD) has posted potential designs of the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) on its website. The airships have even been compared to a “cloud city” by Space.com. A similar size to Earth, Venus is our closest planetary neighbor. However, exploring Venus poses a unique set of challenges, according to NASA. “Though its internal geology is similar to Earth’s, its surface is hot enough to melt lead and is covered with craters, volcanoes, mountains, and lava plains,” it explains.

American singer, actor Frankie Avalon celebrates 78 today.

High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) Venus is an important destination for future space exploration endeavors. However, it presents a unique set of challenges. Though its internal geology is similar to Earth’s, its surface is hot enough to melt lead and is covered with craters, volcanoes, mountains, and lava plains.

Can anyone else go outside and take shoot some decent local photos of tonight's Venus-Moon event with your DSLR? Please NO Interweb photos, ONLY originals from your local view, thanks!

Over the course of the past 200 million years, our planet has experienced four major geological periods (the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous and Cenozoic) and one major ice age (the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation), all of which had a drastic impact on plant and animal life, as well as effecting the course of species evolution. For decades, geologists have also understood that these changes are due in part to gradual shifts in the Earth’s orbit, which are caused by Venus and Jupiter, and repeat regularly every 405,000 years. But it was not until recently that a team of geologists and Earth scientists...